


see how the heart reaches out

by sapphicish



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: F/F, there's a fish!, there's me crying hysterically!, there's some tender chaste touching!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:40:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26500768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: Marie catches Kath in the act. Of hiding a goldfish in her cell.
Relationships: Joan Ferguson & Marie Winter, Joan Ferguson/Marie Winter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	see how the heart reaches out

**Author's Note:**

> 0 proofreading we die like silly little men

“Does it have a name?”

Kath stared at her, and Marie stared back. She hadn't been planning to say that. She'd wanted to say something along the lines of _you have a bloody goldfish in your cell?_ or maybe _how long do you expect to keep that thing around before the screws find it among your things?_ But then her dumbfounded surprise gave way to curiosity, and she stepped closer into the cell where Kath was standing, frozen and shocked, like a kid with their hand caught in the cookie jar.

Only she was older than Marie and her hand had been caught around a jar of water housing a fish.

Marie told herself that this was what happened when you didn't wait long after knocking before entering someone else's cell. You got a surprise of some sort, like finding your blockmate in the act of frantically hiding a goldfish between several books.

Kath's mouth snapped shut with an audible click of teeth, then opened again—she looked a little like the poor fish, swimming tight, cramped circles inside. Marie realized suddenly that she must have taken it from Dr. Miller's office, which made her almost—absurdly—want to laugh, especially when the image spawned at the front of her brain: Kath waiting for the perfect opportunity, then swooping in and stealing a goldfish right out of the aquarium and absconding back to her cell, the doctor none the wiser.

Marie didn't know Kath very well, but not even Kath knew Kath very well, and she thought that it was all a very Kath-like thing to do anyway.

“No,” Kath said softly, her hands trembling around the jar. Marie suddenly thought of her dropping it, the glass breaking on the floor, the fish flopping pitifully and then going still in death, Kath staring down at it with horror—she stopped her train of thought there and took it out of the woman's hands before it could fall.

She set it gently down in the sink, reaching out to nudge the door shut with a foot as she went in order to avoid Reb or anyone else including—God forbid—the screws passing by and seeing it.

Marie had been the first to wake up in the morning, before the broad orange-yellow lights in the yard had even been switched off for the day, and Reb was still stretched out in the sheets on the floor below at that time, hair messy and limbs askew. She had crept past him and gone to make some tea for herself, and she returned as quick as possible after, knowing that it was a distinctly unpleasant experience to be traumatized and alone and wake up in what you thought was a comfortable space with a comfortable person only to realize that – no, they had left you too.

She waited the rest of it out with him, choosing a book to read while she drank her tea in bed, watching the sun rise slowly and higher over the bluish horizon through the window and choosing, for the time being, to stubbornly ignore the presence of the vial of strychnine tucked underneath her pillow.

When he woke up, they went their separate ways outside of the cell, though Marie gave him a brief squeeze around the shoulders before going, promising him in a low murmur that she'd go and ask about Lou for him if he wasn't feeling up to it. Another thing added to her depressingly short list of things to do couldn't end in any harm, even if asking around about it meant asking the screws, who usually—since her return—liked to stare scornfully at her from a distance, or push past her in the halls hard enough to make her stumble.

It was a much less stressful form of aggression than the kind she got from the other inmates, anyway.

“Are you going to tell anyone?” Kath whispered, towering yet small at her side, her fingers fidgeting in front of her. When Marie looked up at her, she seemed to realize just how close she was standing, as she immediately backed off a couple of steps.

“Of course not,” Marie said, “having a fish in your cell is hardly a crime, but just as long as you know the screws won't see it that way. I didn't know you...liked fish.” It wasn't the right thing to say about it, she knew that. Plenty of people in this prison probably liked fish and had the company of fish before coming here—none of them had ever hidden one in their cells.

Judging by the look on Kath's face as she watched her touch the jar and watch the fish, this meant something else. It meant more. A lot more.

Marie gently lifted the jar from the sink and offered it out to Kath again, waiting to see if her hands were steadier or not—they were—before letting go. She ignored the way Kath flinched when their fingers accidentally brushed, just like she ignored the way she surreptitiously wiped at the sides of the jar with the sleeve of her robe when she thought she wasn't being observed.

“I wasn't exactly...aware of it, either,” Kath admitted, sitting down on the edge of the bed like this one encounter had sapped all her strength, the drop heavy and her shoulders hunched inward a little.

“No? Is this something from your past, then?”

Kath's shoulders lifted in response. Marie inhaled, debated for a moment, then sat next to her, just close enough that their thighs touched and nothing else did. In the jar, the fish swam endless laps, its scales glistening in the faint light coming through the cell's window to the yard. Kath clutched at it like she thought Marie would take it away from her for good, and gazed at the little creature within like it was everything to her, the whole world and sun and stars.

“I don't think they live very long in such small spaces,” Marie said, then in case that upset Kath, quickly added on, “not that I would know. I've never owned a fish. Only dogs. Cats. A snake, once.”

Kath's dark eyes lifted to her quickly, then dipped again. “A snake?”

“Mm. It was my son's. I got it for him, you see. A beautiful, scary thing, one of those boa constrictors. He wanted to show it off to all his friends. He liked it for a couple of weeks, and then it shed its skin and he thought that was disgusting, and he didn't like feeding it the mice because of the way it looked going down. So it fell to me to take care of it when he got bored of it.”

Kath curled her fingers inward against the glass, then breathed out evenly at her side. “Children,” she said quietly, like that explained it but also like she had been wanting to say something else.

Marie smiled, not thinking about how Danny would have acted that way at any age, always moving on and on and on to the next thing, place, person that interested him for a while. “Yeah.” She leaned in a little, pausing only when she saw Kath tense. “So. Did you have a fish before, then? In the past.”

Kath swallowed. “I don't remember,” she murmured. She held the jar up a little, and Marie knew that any other person with that look on her face and that sound in her voice would have tapped at the glass, trying to get the attention of something that maybe didn't even have the ability to notice them there at all. Kath didn't. She just looked at it, her face soft and open and bleak.

“Hey,” Marie said, reaching out to touch Kath. It had worked last night—she had sat there for a while with her in silence after taking the poison from her, rubbing her fingers over her broad back and shoulders until Kath stopped shaking, and she hadn't once been pushed away, hadn't once felt the knotting of muscle tension creeping up under her palm. Now, though, Kath wordlessly leaned away, and Marie left her hand suspended in the space between them, wondering if there would be an acceptance after the initial rejection, which she wasn't sure was instinct or deliberate.

“It's a male,” Kath said suddenly, righting herself again so that Marie's fingers brushed barely against her shoulder.

Marie eyed her and then the fish, leaning in a little more to observe it from above, her hand dropping gently against the bend of Kath's forearm as she went. The baby steps taken weren't acknowledged beyond a slight sideways glance. “Really? How can you tell?”

“I don't know.” Kath's voice drifted off into silence. Her thumb trailed over the edge of the jar, again and again, following each lap the goldfish made within.

“He looks like an Apollo,” Marie decided after a few minutes had passed. Every moment spent with Kath felt either meaningful or pointless, but the silences had grown past the latter, past the discomfort and the uncertainty. Now, lately, they felt almost companionable. She couldn't help but smile when she got an odd look for her efforts.

“The—Greek god?”

“The very one. I'm not an expert by any definition, but he's the god of healing, and the sun.” She dared to tap, very briefly with a nail, against the side of the jar. The fish hardly took note, its presence impenetrable to outside factors—it just kept moving, its little fins waving beneath the water. “This little one has the right color, at least.”

She watched Kath's lips when she smiled, the slow and unsteady twitching upturn of them, the way it faded so quickly and suddenly it was like a tic in itself. Marie wanted to make it last. She wanted to pull another out of Kath, wherever they came from, whatever tiny, insignificant little pocket of happiness still resided in this woman who, most times, just seemed confused and lost and alone and afraid.

“Do you really think he'll die?” Kath asked suddenly, after another stretch of silence. She sounded concerned, but it _was_ just a fish – and Marie knew well just how lonely it could get in prison sometimes. If this fearful person who couldn't remember a damn thing about her real life needed company and needed it in the form of a fish, Marie wasn't about to try and stop her.

But if it ended up dying like she thought it might, well—

“Maybe,” she said.

“When?”

Marie paused. She wasn't an expert. She hadn't ever even Googled how to take care of a goldfish, much less considered it. All the pets she'd had later in life was because Danny wanted them and Danny usually got what he wanted, even if she wasn't there to discuss it with him at the time, even if it was Zara or Allie buying him things instead. He'd been good at that, wanting things and getting them, just like his mother.

Danny had never wanted a goldfish, or anything that couldn't keep him entertained outside of its watery home.

“A few days?” she suggested, finally. “It's a bit...small.” She tapped a finger gently against the side of the jar. “I'm sure Reb wouldn't mind giving us the phone for an hour so that we can do some research.”

“What if he—“ Kath looked at the door nervously, then lowered her voice. It was almost enough to make Marie laugh. “Tells them? The officers?”

“He won't.” Marie reached out and laid a hand on top of Kath's without thinking, but just like the night before, she wasn't rejected—it only meant more now, since the woman wasn't in a panic this time around. “I promise. Besides, he could use the distraction, hm? With Lou gone.”

“It's strange to see them apart. They're very...” Kath deliberated for a moment, though Marie already knew what she was going to say before she said it in a very low, delicate tone of voice. “ _Close._ ”

It was said with no small hint of discomfort, which was something she could understand coming from a person like Kath – and, before that, like Joan. Marie was good at learning things about people just from looking, watching, seeing and feeling out all the little traits they kept tucked away. She always had been, even as a little girl, not that it had served her very well then as it did later on in life.

Marie wasn't much of a clingy person, either, the way she knew the word _close_ meant in this context, but then she might have been in Kath's eyes. She enjoyed the fondness and affection of a good friendship, or the warmth and love of a good relationship; she was a person who had always liked people, always needed to rely on some form of company to get through her days. Being alone hurt, more and more as she grew older, especially after Danny's death. Especially after the siege.

“Yeah, well. They love each other. It's a rare thing in here.”

Fresh on Kath's face, a new smile twitched uneasily into existence, then disappeared. “I wouldn't know,” she said, looking back to the fish.

“I suppose—neither would I.” Marie paused at the faintly surprised look Kath gave her, then gave a brief smile of her own as she stood from the bed, tucking her hands into her pockets. “Not to that same extent, at least. Anyway. I'll go talk to Reb about the phone, shall I? We can talk more about your...new little friend here tonight after the count.”

“Apollo,” Kath said lightly, almost like a correction.

Marie laughed. “Yes, Apollo. I'll see you later? You're still on kitchen duty, aren't you?”

Kath nodded, avoiding her eyes. “Yes. I don't like it.” Her voice was soft, low again. “The women here, they're rude, and they don't...they don't clean up after themselves, and they don't wash their hands...”

“...well, that's not something I wanted to hear, as someone who eats usually three times a day in that cafeteria.”

“You haven't gotten food poisoning yet, have you?” There was a dry humour in Kath's voice that Marie wasn't used to hearing, not from her – but then she looked down at her and she didn't seem at all different, still quiet and subtle with no edge whatsoever unless Marie counted the usual anxiety in everything from the set of her shoulders to the look in her eyes.

Marie smiled at the joke. “I suppose you're right. Small mercies. I'll see you at breakfast, sweetheart.”

She turned away for the door, but before she could take a single step toward it, a hand caught her wrist and pulled her back. It startled her almost more than anything else had, including the initial sight of the fish. Marie glanced back, moving into the hesitant tug on her arm instead of pulling away. 

Kath immediately let go as if burned, like her intention hadn't been to make contact at all—or if it was, the mere concept of Marie responding to it the way she did was too much.

“Thank you,” she said, not in the same way she thanked Marie for getting her tea or thanked her for trying to intervene with Lou, even if the both of them always ended up backing down from the unofficial top dog of their particular cell block.

Marie recognized the words, loaded and full of quiet, respectful meaning for what they were. She didn't think it necessary, not when she thought about it for any longer than a few seconds. But she knew how affected by her surroundings Kath could be – she knew that she stayed awake for hours into the night, listening to the screaming and jeering and chanting from the women. During the lockdown it had been particularly bad, to the point where Marie had gotten into the habit of checking in on her every night and morning, just to make sure things hadn't gotten any worse, just to make sure that she was all right, and that she'd slept—even if just for a little while.

Now more than ever she understood the importance of that, and knew that she'd have to keep it up if she wanted Kath not to try what she'd been about to do with the poison when she caught her the night before.

The prison had ill effects on every person who came in and out of it, and Marie knew that maybe better than some. She'd suffered, too, though it hadn't been until after the siege that she felt like the wrath of every single inmate had been turned onto her—until Kath's arrival, and just like that, the beasts in the pens found a new piece of meat to try and gnaw on.

Throughout her life, Marie had always latched onto broken things, broken women and men who needed her and who she grew to need in return. In them, she found kindred spirits – people that she could nurse back to health, whether it was physically or otherwise, and let them grow warm and sweet and attached to her, feeding off the love and affection she earned. There was no harm in it, she'd thought then. Everyone was getting what they wanted. Everyone was happy.

She didn't know what she thought now, and decided not to dwell on it.

Still, the way Kath was looking at her now spawned that familiar fondness inside of the pit of her stomach, deep and warm, like lust without the sharp edges; instead it was all tender, softened corners, and Marie reached out and touched Kath's face before she could stop herself.

Rather than lean away like Marie expected she might, or lean in like she'd known plenty of others to do in the past, the woman froze completely, her dark eyes gazing up at her in a way that made her seem more lost and puzzled than ever before.

Marie stroked her fingers over her jaw a little. Kath's skin was warm and soft—when Marie had learned Lou had taken her moisturizer, she'd given her one of her own extras—and her lips parted a little to allow for an exhale, though it was so thin a sound Marie barely caught it on the peripheral of her hearing.

“You'll be all right, darling,” Marie told her, even if she wasn't sure how she was going to keep that promise. She was going to try, anyway—she'd already made her mind up, more or less since the first time they'd laid eyes on one another.

She knew a good one when she saw them.

She dropped her hand and stepped back before it could stretch on for too long, just as she saw the look in Kath's eyes change. She wanted to be believed, wanted to comfort her – she didn't want her startled, didn't want her disgusted or afraid. Timing was everything for some moments, for some people.

“See you at breakfast,” Kath said, a timid echo of Marie's earlier words.

Marie smiled at her, opened the door and stepped out. As she quietly shut it behind her and took a last glance back through the window slot, she saw Kath standing and crossing the space to the sink, staring in the mirror and touching her cheek, her chin where Marie's fingers had all been. She framed her own jaw like that with her own hand, leaning in over the sink and staring into the glass, staring, staring, and from the angle Marie stood at she couldn't see the expression on her face, couldn't see much at all, but something about the sight of it made her heart ache regardless.

Marie turned away and left the block, her fingertips tingling.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry they still havent kissed. maybe one day


End file.
